Fire in Bone: A Jake Pettman Thriller

by Wes Markin

  Mason approached Priscilla, shaking now with tears streaking his face.

  When he was close enough, she said, “Get control of yourself, Mason.”

  “But now what?”

  “Please … help! Daddy, help me!” Collette shouted.

  “Shit,” Mason said. “She’s calling for her father. She’s calling for the chief of police!”

  Priscilla put her hands on his shoulders. “Breathe, Mason. He can’t hear. No one can hear outside.”

  “That’s not the point! The point is that I just locked the fucking chief of police’s daughter in a cellar!”

  “It’s temporary. You’ve done well. You’ve brought us some breathing space. Don’t blow it now by having a panic attack. We need a plan.”

  Collette’s shouting continued. The door shook as she kicked it.

  “Okay, okay …” Mason said. “Money. Money solves everything. You have a lot of it, right?”

  “Well, my husband does, but yes, along those lines.”

  “And Charles is close to Chief Jewell, isn’t he?”

  Priscilla nodded. “But this all depends on Charles being brought in on it. When today started, I didn’t envisage confessing our antics on your shopfloor.”

  “How will he respond?”

  “In the same way he responds to everything—with careful consideration.”

  Collette was shrieking.

  “She’s losing control,” Mason said. “We need to be quick.”

  “He’ll see the big picture. He’ll want to keep this quiet. He won’t want to destroy everything we’ve worked for. Are you ready for me to contact Charles? Can you handle that? I don’t know how he’ll respond … to you.”

  “No. You don’t understand. It’ll kill Lorraine.”

  Collette reached new volumes.

  “You have no choice though, Mason, do you? Neither of us do now.”

  The kicking grew louder.

  Mason turned full circle. He clutched his head. “There must be some other way.”

  “Let me out!” Collette wailed.

  “Shut up,” Mason shouted back. “Just shut up!”

  NOW

  “SHE SHOULD HAVE stayed silent. Stupid girl,” Priscilla said.

  “Call her stupid again,” Gabriel said, “and it all ends for you this moment.”

  “Okay, okay,” Priscilla said, holding her hands in the air. “But we were so close. We had a plan. I just had to bring Mason on board. But then, it was just too late.”

  “Too late?”

  Priscilla sighed. “Yes. And I’m sorry, Gabriel, I truly am. A day doesn’t pass that I don’t think about what happened next, how it could have been different. I should have put my hand on Mason’s shoulder, I should have calmed him, but—”

  “What happened?”

  “Mason couldn’t cope with her shouting and kicking the door anymore. He just lost it, marched over to the door, opened it, and shouted at her.”

  “Just shouted?”

  “Yes, but … but …”

  “But, what? I don’t understand.”

  She winced as Gabriel pushed the gun harder into her head. “It scared her. She fell … back down the stairs.”

  “Fell?”

  “Yes. No one touched her. No one. It was an accident, Gabriel. You have to believe me.”

  “Did you try to help her?”

  “Of course. Yes, but she was gone. It looked like a broken neck.”

  Gabriel backed away. Keeping hold of the gun, he pinned his wrists to his temples as if he was trying to stop his head from exploding. “You put her in that cellar though?”

  “Yes. Well, Mason did; no one ever wanted to kill a little girl. It was an accident. What do you think I am, Gabriel?”

  “You locked up my sister. You caused the accident, and … and … then you put her in a river. You threw her away. And the sightings in Portland? The witnesses who came forward to say they’d seen her with a young couple? The facial composites? You were behind all of it?”

  “Charles had influence. We needed to divert attention away from Blue Falls. We had no choice. There were no other options.”

  “You could have told the truth.” Gabriel turned in circles. “You ruined my father’s life. My mother’s. Mine!”

  “If I’d gone to jail, it would have destroyed everything we were building. We wanted to improve Blue Falls. We have improved it. I did it for the greater good.”

  “Greater good? Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me? The things you’ve made me do?” He sprayed flecks of spit as he shouted.

  They turned to the window when they heard another car arrive.

  Ewan parked alongside Jake’s beat-up rental.

  Back at the burned-out store, Lillian had admitted to Ewan that she’d informed Jake of the affair. He hadn’t been pleased, and most of this journey to Charles and Priscilla’s house had been spent in stony silent. Having grown fond of Ewan, she was unhappy to have disappointed him, but if she had to, she’d make the same decision all over again. Jake was a valuable asset in a town with very few.

  As they approached the door, they heard a gunshot and drew their weapons.

  “Go to the car,” Ewan said, throwing her the car keys, “and call for backup.”

  Lillian sprinted for Ewan’s Audi, unlocking the doors with the key fob and pulling out her cellphone. She ducked into the vehicle and scrolled through her numbers until she found Lieutenant Louise Price. She looked over the dashboard as Ewan tried the front door and discovered it was unlocked.

  Be careful …

  Louise answered on the second ring.

  “Gunfire in Priscilla Stone’s home, ma’am.”

  She was already aware of the location from an earlier conversation. “Stand down until backup—”

  She watched Ewan disappear into the house. “Officer Taylor has gone in, ma’am.”

  Two more gunshots sounded in quick succession.

  “Officer Sanborn!” Louise said. “Stand down. That’s a direct order.”

  Gabriel exited the house, holding a gun.

  Lillian was both surprised and relieved to see him. She stepped from the vehicle.

  “All clear,” Gabriel said, holstering his weapon.

  She ran toward her chief. “Thank god, sir. You okay?”

  He looked pale and shaken. His hair was glued to his forehead with sweat. “Yes.”

  “Jake? Ewan?”

  “Fine, both in there. Lucky Ewan showed up when he did. Priscilla and her bodyguards turned on us.” He stumbled.

  Lillian took some of his weight and kept him upright.

  “It was her, Lillian. She killed my sister.”

  “You need to sit down, sir.”

  “I’m fine.” He stumbled again.

  She pressed the car keys into his hand. “Sit in Ewan’s Audi, sir.”

  Gabriel stroked Lillian’s face. “God bless you, Lillian. I always liked you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  She ran toward the house and went in the front door. The first thing she saw was Ewan on the floor, clutching his throat, gurgling, and drowning in his own blood. She fell to her knees and took his hands.

  He was trying to open his mouth to speak, but a bullet had also entered his cheek and ruined his jaw.

  She pressed on the backs of his hands, trying to help him in stemming the flow.

  He exhaled and fell still.

  She heard a car starting outside.

  “Lillian!” Jake said.

  She looked up from Ewan’s body and saw another body in the hallway. Ahead through an open door, she noticed Jake sitting at the back of a room. He seemed to be tugging on a radiator.

  “Lillian, it’s Gabriel. He’s lost control!”

  Lillian stood and ran back outside, drawing her weapon. She burst outside in time to see the back of the Audi disappear down the street. She ran back in, dodging past Ewan and the other body. She entered the living room and saw another two bodies, one she recogniz
ed as Priscilla Stone.

  “Help me!” Jake said. He had his feet against the radiator and was tugging with all his might on a pipe.

  She saw the handcuffs, and when she drew close, she fell to her knees and pulled a set of keys from her pocket. She fumbled through them until she found the standard key they used in the department and released Jake.

  Jake stood. “I’m going after him.”

  “No. It’s not a good idea. I’ll call in the car.”

  “Call it in anyway.” Jake ran for the door. “What car is it?”

  She told him.

  Jake was speeding down Gabriel’s road when Ewan’s Audi burst from his driveway. He hit the brakes. A collision would kill them both.

  Gabriel turned sharply left, and Jake bashed his horn. The chief accelerated away.

  “Fuck!” Fast driving was Jake’s Achilles heel. He could handle many things—heights, fire, armed criminals—but stabbing an accelerator pedal and reaching ridiculous speeds was not in his repertoire. “Mike, where are you when I need you?”

  His old colleague, DCI Yorke, had prided himself on a successful high-speed pursuit course. Jake had prided him on it too because it allowed him to take up the honors in situations like this.

  Jake jammed the accelerator pedal, only realizing that Gabriel was about to hit a crossroads when his speedometer raced past eighty. Hopefully, Gabriel would hit the brake. Rear-ending him would be far less of a risk to Jake than a speeding vehicle T-boning him.

  Gabriel cleared the crossroads.

  “Christ!” Jake hit the crossroads.

  He glanced left at the oncoming vehicle. His eyes were blurred from the sweat running down his forehead, so how close the vehicle was he could not ascertain. When he reached the other side, he was almost surprised he was still alive and, with that, came a burst of adrenaline and confidence. He punched the accelerator, tensed his hands on the wheel, and dinked Gabriel’s bumper. “Still here, fucker.”

  Driving an Audi, Gabriel should really have left Jake and his Ford in the dust, but several vehicles were now in front of the chief, acting as regulators.

  “Where you going to go, dickhead?” He bashed the horn again.

  Jake didn’t like Gabriel’s answer; the bastard swerved onto the left side of the road.

  Suicidal …

  Jake followed. Together they streaked around a line of cars. Jake caught a couple of surprised faces in the vehicles they overtook. He prayed to God that he wouldn’t be seeing any surprised faces in any approaching vehicles, or that really would be that.

  Gabriel cleared the three vehicles with ease and darted back in. The prick now had a clear run and quickly opened up some distance.

  Jake was level with the third and final car. He bashed his horn, demanding the driver slow down so he could move in.

  The stupid bastard shot him an angry look.

  How different things would be if he were back home with flashing blue lights on the grille and a two-toned siren! He’d haul this prick over the coals for obstructing him!

  He pushed the speedometer to ninety, gave the angry motorist the finger, and swept in front of them. “Shit!”

  Gabriel was disappearing into the distance.

  He accelerated, taking the vehicle closer to a hundred, and the Audi grew larger in his line of sight again. He could taste the contents of his stomach clawing its way up his throat and into his mouth; this was his idea of Hell.

  He saw the sign for the rotary and gulped.

  Gabriel entered the rotary the same way he’d taken the crossroad—recklessly. He took the second exit but clipped a biker who’d opted for the third. There was a crash as both the biker and the man danced over the concrete.

  Jake was now hurtling toward the unseated biker on the rotary. “Please God, please God …” he said as he swerved. He missed the man but caught the wheel of the upended bike. It spun like a Catherine Wheel, showering sparks.

  They hit a straightaway, and, despite it being residential, Gabriel pushed the speed higher.

  With a superior vehicle, Gabriel had opened a considerable distance between them, but Jake felt like he was still in it. They were approaching the bridge that crossed the Skweda and veered toward Sharon’s Edge.

  Jake’s cell rang. He swept it up from the passenger seat, answered it, and sandwiched it between his shoulder and ear. “Yes.”

  Ahead, Gabriel had been forced to stop. A tractor trailer was crossing the bridge, and a stream of traffic was coming in the opposite direction.

  “Where are you, Jake?” Lillian asked in the phone.

  “I’m following him. I caught him coming out of his place. I’m so close I can taste the fucker’s exhaust fumes.”

  Jake clipped Gabriel’s bumper again. The whole car shook, but he kept the cell tight against his ear. “Pull back, Jake. You have to pull back.”

  “No chance. After watching this bastard in action, I have a duty.”

  Gabriel was desperately trying to get his vehicle onto the other side of the road to evade the tractor trailer, but the traffic continued.

  “I’ve got him trapped. Tell me that the cavalry is coming.”

  “Yes, but you have to stop.”

  “I can’t.”

  “He could have someone in the vehicle with him,” Lillian said.

  “He’s alone.”

  “We’re at his house. Someone was in his basement. The doors were open, but he’d clearly had someone locked up down there!”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. But why do you think he stopped here?”

  Jake gulped.

  Gabriel was forcing out the nose of the Audi now. At first break, the desperate chief would go for it. If he messed it up, he’d be wiped out.

  “We think it might be a child,” Lillian said. “There are children’s books in the room.”

  Jake took his foot off the accelerator.

  No one was behind him, so he let the car slow.

  The tractor trailer and Gabriel drove off into the distance.

  “Tell me you’re going to get him,” Jake said.

  “Yes, major roads out are blocked. He won’t be leaving the area.”

  He cleared the bridge and pulled to the shoulder. He bashed the wheel. “Shit.”

  “There’s something else.”

  “Go on.”

  “Piper. She was attacked.”

  Jake felt his body crumbling.

  “She’s lost a lot of blood, but I think she’ll be okay. The motel manager found her. Jake, I think—”

  The cell phone slipped from his shoulder and fell to the floorboards. He didn’t bother to retrieve it. Instead, he made a U-turn and headed into Blue Falls and the hospital.

  AFTER …

  PETER SHEENAN STOOD by Felicity Davis’s gravestone long after the service had finished. The hole was still to be filled, so he stared at the coffin. “Wherever you may be, I hope you find some peace.”

  “She will,” Piper said.

  Peter smiled down at Piper in her wheelchair, then up at the large man pushing it. “Staying with that accursed family for so long … thinking that this was the best thing for her children … she made a dreadful mistake.”

  Jake put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We all make them.”

  Peter sighed and wiped away a tear. “So, how long before you are up and about, Piper?”

  “Rehab’s going well, but my soccer days are over. Doctor says I’ll always have a limp.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I always hated soccer.”

  Jake smiled and put his other hand on Piper’s shoulder. “Shall we head to the Taps for an afternoon drink?”

  “I’ll pass. There’s someone else I’d like to say hello to while I’m here,” Peter answered.

  Jake nodded. “Stay out of trouble.”

  Peter laughed. “Oh, the irony.” Peter waited until Jake had wheeled Piper away to cross the graveyard via a path lined with blossom trees.


  When he reached his destination, he opened a fold-up chair he’d left by the gravestone earlier and sat down. He stared at the fresh flowers he’d also delivered before Felicity’s funeral. Then he reached into his pocket for his hip flask. After pouring some Old Crow onto the ground, he said, “There you go, old man.” He took a mouthful himself. “Was at a loose end myself, and you didn’t seem too busy. Going to be a clear sunset later.” He pointed up at the blossom trees. “And we got the best view for it.”

  Crowther’s coffee shop was quieter than usual, but this just seemed to make Lillian more nervous. She quickly drank her coffee and had ordered a second before she got to the point. “I can’t see you anymore.”

  “Oh,” Jake said, opting to wash down the first coffee with water rather than order a second. “Why not?”

  “Lieutenant Louise Price.”

  “I see. So, she can tell you who to be friends with?”

  “It’s more than that, Jake, and you know it.”

  Jake laughed. “Don’t worry, Lillian. I think the world of you, you know that. If me stepping aside helps your career, just tell me how far to step.”

  “At least until she goes. Then we can be friends again.”

  “Okay. When’s that likely to be then?”

  “When she finds the chief and the missing child.”

  “Interesting how the case she turned up for closes and she sticks on for another one.”

  “She’s like you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “She is—obsessive, especially when it involves children.”

  “Aren’t we all like that when it involves children?”

  Lillian nodded. “I guess so. She took the death of Ewan hard too.”

  “As did you,” Jake said, reaching to take her hand.

  Lillian pulled away her hand. “I hardly knew him.”

  “Doesn’t mean it didn’t affect you.”

  “No. I guess you’re right. You know, she’s a good person, the lieutenant. You’d like her.”

  “I’m sure I would.”

  “She’s had a bad life. Awful things have happened to her.”

  “Like what?”

  Lillian opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I can’t say. I really can’t.”